Old Mythologies
by antoninya
Summary: "If anyone asked, I told them that I grew up in the castle." The life and times of Helena Ravenclaw; nine-year-old Helena is brought to Hogwarts Castle in Alba by her mother after the fall of Preslav to the Byzantine army in the year 971.
1. Chapter 1

**Old Mythologies**

_I made my song a coat  
__Covered with embroideries  
__Out of old mythologies  
__From heel to throat;  
__But the fools caught it,  
__Wore it in the world's eyes  
__As though they'd wrought it.__  
_- A Coat; William Butler Yeats

* * *

**Chapter One: The Castle**

_From that moment on,  
__I left behind me the void of my steps,  
__The traces of my unlived life.  
__Where did all the words go?  
_- Në "trojet" tona; Flutura Açka

If anyone asked, I told them that I grew up in the castle.

It wasn't the truth, even though it felt that way. My life split when I was nine years old, into two separate lives. Before I came to this stronghold of magic in Alba, hidden in the Northwest Highlands, I was a child among my father's people, fostered by the family of the woman I was named for. Those memories are distant and layered in time and trauma.

When Preslav fell to the armies of the Byzantine emperor in 971, my mother came for me. She was a stranger with my features shifted into a more delicate beauty on her face, tall and imposing in her cloak the colour of the sea. It stood out against the remains of the fires and damage from the siege.

She felt more like a statue than a person, impossibly perfect in every way.

I never lived up to her expectations. I expect that I was too much like my father in that regard. From what I remember, he never spoke of her, and in the time that I lived with my mother, she had never spoken of him. In my mind, they remained separated down to the linguistic level. My father: the Bulgarian tongue with its building blocks taken from the Church's language and modified to every day life. My mother: the shifting realm of the Germanic mixture of Anglo-Saxon flavoured by Latin and Norse and inflections from the Celtic languages. Always changing, always devouring everything they came across in the name of progress.

I didn't know the story of how they met, or how they parted, or even why I came to exist. The distance between them seemed immeasurable and not just in terms of geography. That obstacle was easily enough overcome by careful use of Apparition. I didn't know why I was raised in Bulgaria after my father died when I was still very young, and I didn't know why she didn't come for me then.

I suspected that she wanted to forget about me. I suspected that I was unwanted, and suspected that still when she came to get me after the death of the woman I was named for and her husband. It was in every way she looked at me. She understood magic too well, and it was a detriment to her understanding of people.

I was an only child in the castle that contained hundreds; I was the youngest of five in my foster-family's house in Bulgaria.

When my mother came for me, I was nine years old. I thought it was snowing, an oddity for April. Only later would I realize that the white particles falling from the sky were ash and not snow. She arrived after sunset, her cloak rippling around her as she walked.

She brought me to Alba with her through side-along Apparition. I felt the world drop out from under me for the second time in such a short while as we vanished into the crushing darkness. It was my first time Apparating, and I vomited upon our arrival on foreign soil and subsequently fell to the ground. I doubted that this endeared me to her at all.

I brought my hands together and tried to ignore their shaking. I concentrated on them, pressing my fingers together and forming a bowl. I closed my eyes.

"_Voda._" I managed to conjure a small amount of water in my cupped hands. It made me feel a little light-headed, especially after the Apparition. I rinsed my mouth out, spat, and then dried my hands and face on my sleeve. My mother watched me impassively, like she was judging me on some sort of scale that I knew nothing about.

"This is one of the few wizard-only enclaves in the Isles," she said, once I had risen to my feet. It was the fourth or fifth sentence that she had ever spoken to me. I followed her into the twilight, heading uphill, away from the small gathering of buildings that might, generously, be called a village.

It had been dark near Preslav, after nightfall, but here the sky was still light, still early. I wasn't sure how much difference in time there was. The sun still set in the west, red splashing across the sky. It reminded me of the fires and for a moment, I felt like it could feel the heat on my face. I shuddered.

From the sun's position, we were heading southeast.

I followed my mother, skirts gathered in my hands, pulling them up above my boots. The ground was rocky and uneven, made even more so by the mud, so wet that it must have rained very recently.

Cut into the ground were wheel tracks, from where carts and carriages had gone by. My mother moved with a grace that befit her image, moving like the ground was as flat as a board. I had to keep from tripping as the sky grew steadily darker.

It wasn't a long walk. We reached a closed gate, the iron bars stretching high up. The fence in which it was set stretched on either side, encompassing a vast amount of ground. By now, the sun had nearly set, and the only light was coming from beyond the gate.

"This is Hogwarts; this is my school. It will be your new home. Right now, we are in our third year of operation. We have just recently reconvened for the new semester."

Her sentences in Bulgarian were short and to the point. They served their purpose without any embellishments for warmth or any other emotion. She used the formal pronouns and phrasing that denoted a user unfamiliar with the intricacies of the language. It wasn't how I was normally used to being dealt with.

On the other side of the gate, there was at least a semblance to a pathway, as if someone had gotten tired of tramping through the mud and cut a walkway through the ground. I let my skirts fall back around my ankles, making my legs marginally warmer. It might have been April, but it was still evening. The wind here felt like it cut right through my stockings. The material my dress was cut from was at least made of a tighter weave.

We passed a person moving the other way, and my mother spoke to him. I caught what could have been a name. Godric? She gestured to me and I caught my name. I looked up and saw the face of an older man, the orange in his beard still visible in the dying light. He smiled at me.

"Helena, say hello." My mother's voice was softer now. Maybe it was something that only came out in the presence of people who weren't me.

I looked at her, and then back at him.

"Hello," he said.

I shaped the new word carefully, trying out the feel of the new, Anglo-Saxon sound. "Hello?" It was more of a question.

My mother smiled, satisfied. She exchanged a few more words with the red-haired man before he carried on in the direction that we had come and we resumed our journey.

When we reached the front doors, they opened with a single touch from my mother, swinging inward without any effort. My feet sounded loud on the floor, echoing throughout the entrance chamber.

I could hear the sound of voices from close by. We didn't go toward the noise, toward the scent of food. My mother led me through the castle, up several flights of stairs. Some of them moved from one wall to the other and we had to wait for them to complete their journey. I looked downward somewhere after the fifth staircase, and winced. That sort of fall would guarantee that at least something would break.

"What - " I paused and licked my lips. My mouth was dry. I tried again: "what was that, on the ground floor?"

"The Great Hall. Meals are usually taken there." My mother didn't turn around to answer me. Once the staircase we were on was against the landing, she hurried upward still. I grabbed onto the railing of the landing before stepping onto it, making sure that I was anchored to something if the staircase decided to move out from under me without a moment's notice. They seemed to obey my mother, moving in the direction that she was heading. I didn't think that they would do the same for me.

I counted four different flights of stairs between the ground floor and the one that we stepped off onto, finally heading through an archway. I glanced over my shoulder. There were a few portraits hanging on the walls in that grand stairway. Some of them watched me with curious eyes. I was probably the youngest person they had ever seen inside these walls.

I followed my mother to a portrait of a woman dressed simply in a Greek chiton. Her chin was lifted, proud, and she had a full mouth and chin. An owl perched on a short column nearby, and she wore a warrior's helmet. She had her hand extended outward, palm facing out, as if she were warding something up.

"Pallas Athene," my mother said.

I peered at the portrait. The woman within was still. I couldn't catch even a flicker of movement.

"Is there something wrong with it?"

"No." My mother reached her own hand forward and pressed it against the painting's.

It swung backward in its frame, opening onto a room. My mother stepped through and I followed her, scrambling over the doorway that started near my knees, and looking back at the portrait. The woman, Pallas Athene, looked strong and proud. I could see, even with the short time I had spent with her, why my mother would have a painting like that.

She pulled off her cloak and set it on a hook near the doorway. She shook out her hair and pulled a wand from within her robes. She waved it at the fireplace and instantly the flames sprung up, bright and merry. A few candles also lit themselves.

I flinched back from the flames. I might have been cold, but the fires in the city were barely hours away. They were still in my immediate memory.

I looked everywhere but the fireplace.

In the new light, I could see that my mother's hair was lighter than my own; a dark red, closer to brown than to black. She paused by the table, and skimmed over a few pages.

"Merry!" My mother called out.

With a loud crack that nearly made me jump out of my boots, a stopanin appeared.

"Tell him what you would like to eat," my mother said, waving one hand at the stopanin. He gave a small bow, his giant ears flopping about. His beard scraped the floor when he bent over.

I eyed the small, bearded creature. He looked like other stopaninye I had seen before: small, coloured a strange grey hue, and with large eyes and ears. There couldn't be too much difference between them.

"If you will excuse me, I have business to attend to," my mother said. She was gone, out the portrait door, before I could say anything. I clutched at the collar of my cloak. With the fire going, it was beginning to become uncomfortable.

I looked helplessly at the stopanin. He looked back at me with large eyes, eager to serve.

"Householder?" I asked, hesitantly.

Stopanin's eyebrows rose up and wrinkled together in confusion.

"You only speak English, don't you?" I asked, doubtful of its linguistic proficiency in Bulgarian.

Stopanin said something, voice rising up at the end. A question.

We stared at each other.

"Bulgarian? Russian?" I could handle a few phrases in German if I needed to, but they were mostly swear words that my foster-brothers had taught me when they were home on break from Scholomance.

Stopanin vanished with a loud crack. I jumped at the sound.

Now alone in my mother's room, I looked around. A curtain behind me divided the room. I pulled it aside a bit, and found there a bed, a wardrobe, and several more shelves full of books and a door. There were books everywhere in this room. I had never seen so many in one place. The sheer amount of money that they represented astounded me. I looked at the ones nearest me. Some of them had writing on the spines, words tattooed into the leather in the rounded letters of the insular script of the Isles. I tilted my head to the side and ran my index finger down the spine of the nearest book. I couldn't read the letters. This, of all things, was what really drove home my new situation.

I would never see my father's books again. I would probably never see another scrap of writing in the letters of St. Cyril unless it was by my own hand. I withdrew my fingers from the book and felt very alone.

I slowly undid the ties of my cloak and pulled it off. I placed it on the hook next to my mother's, having to stand on tip toe to do so. Everything in here was sized for an adult, not a nine year old girl. I pulled off my boots, and set them underneath my cloak, lining the heels up so that they were flat against the wall.

There was another sudden crack, and then Stopanin was back. Now, he had a friend. This one looked younger, and didn't have a beard. As far as I could tell, it looked female.

"Stopaninya?"

She made an attempt at a curtsey. It was a hard task to accomplish while garbed in the same sort of chiton as Pallas Athene.

"Miss would like some food?" she asked. Her accent was a bit off, but it was probably the best that I would get out of anyone here, save my mother and myself.

"Yes," I said, grateful. Stopanin smiled and disappeared with another crack. Clearly, he felt that his work was done.

"Do you have gyuvetch?" It was a reasonable request, stew made from vegetables and meat.

Stopaninya rattled off, in one breath: "Iri knows that the kitchens has potatoes and carrots and eggplants and dried mushrooms and onions and - "

"That's good," I said, letting out a long breath. My shoulders sagged, released a bit from the tension that had my entire body strung tighter than a fiddle. "I - I would like some. Please."

"Right away, miss." Stopaninya - Iri - curtseyed again, and vanished with a crack. At least this time, I didn't jump at it.

I wrapped my arms around myself and crossed to the window. The darkness outside ensured that my face was reflected back at me. I looked small and pale in the glass.

There were chairs grouped around the table, some of them lopsided. They looked like people had just left them there. On the door side of the curtain, there was a long bench, both ends raised with cushions resting there. There was a thinner cushion stretched across the wooden middle, and they were all in shades of blue. It had a twin set at a perpendicular angle to it that was shorter. The first bench was furthest from the fireplace without entering what was obviously my mother's bedchamber. Eating in there would just cause an infestation of insects or bring up all the rats.

I sat down on the bench. Either the cushion was softer than I thought, or there was a charm placed on it. I glanced toward the candle held by a wall bracket nearest me. My mother had used a wand to light it. I rubbed my hands together.

That was a big difference. I had conjured water by myself, without channeling magic through an object. I didn't know if that was acceptable here. I didn't know how everything would work here. David had told me, on his first return from Scholomance, that channeling magic through a wand was easier. Instead of having to concentrate so hard, there were movements and specific inflections that made a wizard's will become reality.

Iri returned with a steaming bowl of gyuvetch, a spoon, and a goblet full of milk. She set them on the small table next to the bench and curtseyed again before vanishing.

I ate slowly, eyeing the back of the portrait door. From here I could see canvas. Was that really the only thing keeping someone out of the room? I knew that there were protection charms, hearth magic that could keep a dwelling safe.

I just wasn't sure if this room, this place that appeared to be both where my mother worked and slept, in a place that was used by so many would have been able to be protected under house magic laws. Then again, I didn't know how many stopaninye the castle had. Maybe enough of them combined could raise enough power.

My mother returned some time after I had finished eating and Iri had cleared away the dishes. I think there were a dozen words exchanged between us, and I ended up stretched out on the bench with a conjured pillow and blanket, where my toes could barely brush the end if I stretched out my legs. I wore a borrowed nightgown.

I stayed awake long after my mother fell asleep, eyes open and taking in the room from this new level. I still didn't know what the time was here in relation to Preslav, but I should have been tired no matter what it was. I listened to her breathing, smooth and steady, beyond the curtain, and stared at the fireplace.

I curled my fingers in the blankets, pulling over my head and around my face like a head wrap, and held them there with my fingers curled tightly around the fabric.

The slowly dying embers were the last thing that I saw before I fell asleep.

* * *

**Author's Notes**:  
(also known as a whole whopping bit of information that will be dumped at the end)

_Historical Background_: In the tenth century, there was no Scotland or England or what-have you. There was the Kingdom of Alba in the northern part of the British Isles. Linguistically, this makes things really annoying because a lot of the words we have today didn't exist in Ye Olde Englishe/Anglo-Saxon. As well, Albania itself didn't exist as a separate entity; it was part of the Bulgarian empire. And, well, we all know how our beloved JK is when it comes to some historical facts. In which there are ways that no such things could have existed at the time.

_Magic Systems_: Well, Ollivander's may have been around since 300-something BCE, but when you've got a crockpot of different cultures and languages like you did in the tenth century, you would have had different magic systems. Hence, wandless v. wand magic.

_Linguistically_: Stopanin/stopaninye/stopaninya = the Bulgarian term for house elf(ves), in the same manner as the Russian domovoi/domovoye/domovoya. And I'm not even going to go into how Latin would have been the lingua franca for teaching, despite the bastard Latinate spells that we know as part of the universe.


	2. Chapter 2

**Old Mythologies**

**Chapter Two: Exploration**

_I was on fire with the city. The smoke curled around me, around Mikhail and Anna and Elizabeta. My foster-sisters and I held hands to make sure we weren't separated. There were too many people here, on foot and on horseback._

_David was in front of us, David with his wand and his near-seven years of training at Scholomance. He cast water charms to clear the way in front of us. We stumbled forward, even as the ground still felt like it was aflame under our feet. I had to nearly jump every time to keep up with the rest, take big, leaping steps. Elizabeta and Anna were older and taller and fear made us all move quickly. _

_We had already lost our parents and Nikolai when the first wave came. It wasn't only Muggles on horseback with their swords and arrows, cutting down everything in their path. The Byzantine empire employed wizards with deadly skills in their armies, and they were here, under the orders of Johannes Tzimiskes. _

_Mikhail brought up the rear because he was the next oldest and because he was the other boy. He held Muggle farming tools: a grain scythe tucked in his belt and a larger one in his hands, tall on its pole._

_Even with David's water charms, the fires were closing in. We could hear hoofbeats and raised voices. Screams. I couldn't tell if the tears running down my face were from the smoke and heat or from terror._

_I tried to grip Elizabeta's hand tighter, but it was slippery with sweat and grime. My fingers closed on nothing as something nearby exploded._

_I fell, screaming. It echoed off of the walls._

I sat up, on the bench in my mother's office, hundreds of leagues away from Preslav, soaked in sweat. My throat was sore. I had been screaming aloud, not just in the dream. My breath was harsh and quick, and so were the sobs that punctuated it.

I wiped at my face with more force than necessary, knuckles hard against the soft skin there. I tried desperately to calm my breathing, to make it sound less like an infant squalling. I hated when I cried. It was always messy.

There was no one else around. The blankets I had so carefully curled up under last night were strewn on the floor where I had kicked them off, lost in my nightmares. I tried to control my breathing, wrapping my arms around myself. My nightgown was clammy and stuck to my skin, a direct contrast to the heat that I could have sworn was all around me.

Even the fire in the room wasn't that large. It must have been magic, to heat a room with stone walls and floors while burning low. I didn't want to go near it at all.

I wanted to keep crying, to continue to let the tears run down my face and dissolve into sniffles. It was a perfectly normal reaction for a nine-year-old. I hiccuped when I swallowed my sobs and looked around the room.

On the other, shorter bench, there was a small pile of folded clothing. It wasn't my dress that I had worn yesterday. And, when I looked at the hooks by the portrait door, my cloak wasn't there either. They had probably been torn down for rags. Even with magic, human or stopaninye, there was only so much you could do to get the smell of smoke out of fabric. If my clothes had been hanging there, I wouldn't have worn them. They were bound up in Preslav.

I shivered. My wet nightgown was deeply uncomfortable. I picked at it, holding it away from my body. Tears kept leaking from my eyes, but they were coming fewer and slower now. The sobs had at least stopped. My shoulders were no longer heaving, so I didn't have to worry about collapsing in on myself like a crumpled dress when I stood up.

The floor was cold beneath my feet. Clearly, the fire-magic didn't extend to it. I hurried around to the curtain, to see if my mother was there.

Her bed was made and empty. From the windows, the sun was already high in the sky. It had to have been nearing noon. Why had I been allowed to sleep for so long? Why hadn't anyone woken me up for morning prayers? I had long-missed lauds. At home, we usually did morning and evening prayers, leaving the rest of the liturgy of the hours unsaid. There was just too much to do for praying to a God whose followers believed we were going to hell simply for being magic.

I was about to turn back around to go get dressed when I saw that the door beside my mother's bed was open.

Curious, I headed to it. On the other side, the decor was completely different. The stones were polished white, like limestone, and there was a deep impression in the ground, like someone had enlarged a basin and set it in the floor. A toilet was set into the corner. While Muggles had lost that technology through the ages, we wizards thankfully never had. There was a mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I could only see the top of my head in it, and my face if I stood on my tip toes.

There was still dirt on my face. I reached the basin and looked into it. It was empty.

"Voda?"

Nothing. I closed my eyes. At home, the basin would have already been filled and bespelled to keep anything out of it.

I concentrated on the basin, reaching up to grip the basin's edge. "_Voda._"

This time the water appeared, splashing slightly against the sides of the basin. I washed up quickly, cleaning my face and hands and headed back into the main room to get dressed.

Above, I could hear footsteps. My mother had said this was a school. Were those her students up there? What were they like? Were they all from Alba, as well?

In the neatly folded pile of clothing on the shorter bench was a pale linen shift decorated around the neck and wrist with embroidery. I slipped it on. Over it went a simple shift. It was bright blue, a colour I had never seen on everyday clothing before. It was something that should have been reserved for special occasions. I pinned the shoulders closed so it didn't fall down.

The pins were made of bronze, both in the rough shape of a bird. I fingered one, tracing the engraved lines that stood for feathers. I wondered if my mother had worn these clothes when she was my age. They were clean and serviceable, but didn't smell like they had been in storage. If they weren't my mother's, then where had she got them from?

The shoes were the strangest. My boots were gone, and in their space was a pair of flat, pointed shoes that looked like they were made out of barely treated leather. They didn't look like they would hold up well for anything. I experimentally scuffed my foot against the floor while I tied a sash around my waist to hold the clothing close to me.

There hadn't been any stockings in the pile of clothing. Maybe there weren't any small enough. I would be all right if I stayed inside, though.

Again, came the sound of footsteps. This time, they sounded closer. I hurried to the portrait door and pulled at the small latch on the back. It opened wide enough that I could see through it.

A group of what had to be students passed by, showing me their backs. A few talked excitedly among themselves as they headed down the staircase my mother and I had come up the previous night. I slipped from the room, my steps soft in the thin leather shoes nearly soundless on the floor.

They seemed as good a group to follow as anyone. I headed down the staircases, grateful that they were staying in place for the time being. Maybe it took a large enough group to control them as well. I tucked this information away.

The group split three floors down. Some of them went left and others went right. I tried to make sense of it, to see if the boys went one way and the girls went the other, but they remained mixed-sex. When they noticed me, they didn't say anything about it. I thought that they might have guessed that I was one of the younger students there.

I followed the group that went left. They forked left again, heading toward the hallway that I knew led down to the main level and the front doors. I paused at the corridor that they had passed. I headed along it, light shining through the windows. There was a nice breeze coming in through the spaces, and it made my hair fly back as I passed a pair of classrooms. Peeking inside the first one, I saw individual desk and chair set-ups, set in the direction of the front of the room, away from the hallway.

I paused, and looked at the open windows. I crossed to them and peered outside, and up at the sun. The front of the classroom was to the north-east. I slipped through the door and made my way between the desks to the other windows. These ones were covered, their shutters closed. I grabbed onto one and pulled it open.

I looked down on a courtyard. Several people hurried across it, evidently going somewhere. Classes, probably. Maybe it was mealtime? I had reckoned that it was close to noon. I watched the people for a minute, and then leaned further out the window, balancing on the sill on my stomach, feet leaving the floor. I looked at the outside of the castle. There was a doorway of some sort leading out to the courtyard below and to the left of me.

It took only a few minutes before I ended up in the courtyard, and in that time, it had nearly emptied out. There was a small group of people around one corner of it, sitting on a bench. One of them had a large, silver bird at the end of their wand. I ignored them and crossed the courtyard like I did it every day, like I wasn't nine years old and this was completely unknown territory.

The hallway I ended up in finished quickly, turning into a walled walkway. I paused midway and looked behind me. There was a smaller tower in my view, but I could see where my mother's rooms were. It looked like there were still more floors above them in the largest tower of the castle.

I continued on my way, wandering in the hallways. When I saw a woman with long, dark hair heading toward me, I pressed back against the wall, back hitting a tapestry. As she drew closer, I saw that she wasn't my mother and breathed a bit easier. She didn't even have the same facial structure. I relaxed against the tapestry and it moved.

I whirled around and looked at it. It showed a forest grove, the kind you might expect to see a unicorn and a maiden in. I prodded it. It moved backward, like there was no wall behind it.

I pushed it aside. There was a staircase beyond it, heading down.

I left the tapestry hanging askew and followed the stairs down. There were a few candles lighting the way. At least one person used this way frequently enough to require lighting. I followed the stair case down and around its turns. It flattened out in an area of the castle that I doubted most people came down to.

The furniture that I saw in the rooms I passed was old and some of it was broken. Storage?

I followed the subterranean hallways until I reached another set of stairs. Just how deep did the basement levels of this castle go? I headed further down and further in. As I set down this staircase, I increased the sound of my steps.

I was practically stomping around the hallways as I took the turns with a quicker pace, taking longer and longer steps until I was practically jumping from foot to foot. Eventually, I came to a dead end. The hallway turned to the left and to the right, but didn't continue straight. I could see the ends of the other halls, as well. I turned around and paused.

While thinking about the way I had come, I heard a noise behind me. I whirled around and there was a man standing in the hallway, like he had appeared suddenly.

He was tall and thin, with dark hair and eyes. Eyes that were currently narrowed at me. He said something.

"I think I'm lost," I said.

"You're Rowena's girl," he said, speaking this time in Russian. Close enough to Bulgarian for me to understand, close enough for communication.

"Yes."

My expression of relief must have brightened my face nearly as much as the sun brightened the sky in the morning because he let out a little laugh at it, smiling. It didn't quite reach his eyes.

"You should not be down here," he said. He hissed in the direction of his hand.

I watched, wide-eyed, as a snake slithered out from under his sleeve. It was white against his skin as it wound around his wrist. He crouched down and the snake slithered down to the ground and toward me.

"It will guide you back up to the main level," he said, nodding toward the snake. It was halfway between us. When it neared my feet, I crouched down to pick it up.

The snake slithered onto my palms, tongue flickering and tasting the air. It looked at me with bright eyes, and then back at its master. It hissed at him, a response. The dark-haired man nodded, before turning and walking away.

"Thank you," I called after him, rising back up to my feet. The snake rose up in my hands, and jabbed its head toward me. I turned around and it jabbed its head away from me. Well. That would do it.

I used the snake as a compass, checking it at every bend I came to. It jabbed its head in the direction that I was supposed to walk in. It was a very clever snake.

I walked past dozens of closed rooms and some open ones. Some had furniture and some didn't. After a long series of tunnels, I followed the snake up one flight of stairs. I was beginning to think that there was no way that I could have come this way. It was just too far.

The next floor went quickly. We were still in the dungeons, but there was much less time between the first staircase and this next one.

Relief flooded through me once I had finished climbing the second set of stairs. We were in the entrance hall of the castle, where I had come in. I could see the giant front doors, and the main staircase that led up to the other floors. The snake jabbed its head to the left.

"But I know where I am, now," I said, even though there was no way it could understand me. I didn't speak the language of snakes.

The snake looked at me, and at my feet, and then jabbed its head toward the left once more. I looked over at the hallway leading to the Great Hall. Whatever instructions the snake had been given, they were to see me safe in there. Impatient, the snake hissed at me. I suspected that whatever it was saying in snake language wasn't very nice. It opened its mouth, showing me needle sharp fangs.

"I'll go, then," I said. When I started walking toward the Great Hall, the snake relaxed in my palms, lowering its head and mouth closing. Its tongue flickered out against my skin, tickling slightly.

I entered the Great Hall and paused. There were tables set up: long ones, mostly empty. A few knots of students sat here and there. The snake, satisfied with its job, slithered across my hand. It fell to the ground and moved off, probably going back to where it had come from.

Nearby, a girl nudged the one beside her. They stopped talking and looked over at me.

"Hello," said the nearest one. She had red hair that fought to be free of its tie. The curls spilled forward onto her shoulders.

"Hello," I said, hanging back. She continued on, in English. When I didn't reply, her smile faltered. She turned to her companion, a boy with similar hair and spoke to him. After she was finished, he nodded and got up from the table. I watched him walk away.

There were two other girls there, and the blonde one shifted to the side and patted the now-empty part of the bench next to her. I climbed up on it, and the red-haired girl smiled at me once more. She reached out to my hair and picked up a strand. She said something and pointed to the blonde's hair, which was arranged in a plait.

They babbled happily with each other in English while the redhead braided my hair in a strange, intricate fashion. The plait stretched down my back, and the fair-skinned blonde conjured a small flower out of the air. She laughed and tucked it behind my ear, smiling.

"Helena?" I turned in the direction of the voice and saw a blonde woman. My hair slipped through the hands of the girl braiding it.

The blonde woman hurried forward, and held out her hand to me. She had something wrapped around her fingers, something shining. She smiled at me, and held it out.

I turned it over in my hands. It was a pendant, hanging on a leather strap. The pendant had something carved into it, words so tiny that I couldn't read them. The blonde woman took the strap and slung it over my head. She picked up my hand and turned it over.

Then, so quickly that I had no time to react, she pricked my finger with a needle drawn from her sash. I yelled and tried to yank my hand back, but she held it fast. She pressed the pendant against my bloodied finger and it flashed, once, like the sun on the ocean.

Satisfied, she let my hand go.

"I'm sorry about the blood, but it's really the only way it's going to work," she said.

I gaped at her, open-mouthed. I grasped the pendant with my wounded hand.

"I did the charms on it, so it should hold for a good while," she said. "I'm Helga, your mother's friend."

"Thank you," I said. My words came out in Bulgarian. I stared quizzically at Helga.

"That part I couldn't do, not on such short notice, but by itself, the pendant is going to be very good for you, Helena. It's going to make learning English that much better." Helga's smile broadened, and it was catching.

I might not have been able to thank her properly in a language she could understand, but I could make do with gestures. I stood up and hugged her, tightly. The pendant she had made was probably the best thing that I could have ever received.


	3. Chapter 3

**Old Mythologies**

**Chapter Three: Alder and Ashwinder**

Helga's pendant was a great boon to me. With it, I could understand everyone around me. Of course, it wouldn't translate my words into English, but it was better than wandering around as if I was an idiot. It enabled me to learn at an accelerated pace, something I'm fairly certain was my mother's idea. She couldn't stand the idea that any child of hers couldn't understand her properly.

"You're young enough that you should adapt quickly," my mother said one morning, about a week after I had arrived. I had spent the time exploring the castle, expanding my mental map of the building and its inhabitants. She looked down at me, evaluating.

I paused in trying to copy out letters. I had a wax tablet that could easily be returned to its original form, and a whittled stick to use as a stylo. It looked like a poor imitation of the wand she always had tucked in the sash around her waist, ready to be used.

I didn't know what I was copying, really. Helga's pendant didn't expand to the written word. It was something I had decided to learn on my own.

My mother eyed the stick with which I made my crude attempts at writing Anglo-Saxon script. It was all circles to me.

"You will need a wand, of course," she said, returning to her own work. She had a cauldron set up over the fire today, an array of clear bottles filled with all sorts of interesting things hovering near her.

"I already know magic, though," I said.

"That's not proper magic," she said, plucking a bottle of eyes out of the air. She took the top off, scooped out two with her fingers and let them fall into her cauldron. I made a face that she didn't catch. "You can't control it."

"Papa could," I said.

She froze. My mother replaced the lid on the jar of eyes and set it down on the table, taking in a deep breath. I watched her back warily. Her shoulders were up, tight and uncomfortable.

"We do things differently here at Hogwarts," she said. "I'll take you to get a wand sometime soon. Until then, please be careful Helena. I know you can do some household charms, but I would appreciate it if you would limit those to this room."

"Why?" That was one English word that I had already put to memory.

"Untrained magic isn't good. It's unpredictable at best, and fatal at the worst."

"I've never hurt anyone," I said. "Mam and Dad - " she looked over at me and for a moment, I saw hurt flash across her face. I amended my words. "My foster parents didn't have wands. They never hurt anyone and could control it just fine."

"It's the way of progress, Helena." She pointed her wand at the cauldron and twirled the end. In response, the liquid within began to stir itself. "Why use magic in a way where you cannot always guarantee the results when you can channel it through a wand with greater control and ease?"

Though it was a question, it was meant to be the final word.

I used my stylo to carve the word wand in Cyrillic letters on the wax tablet.

The very next day she took me down to the village to get my very own wand.

I had my boots back, which I was very grateful for. The journey down to the village, short though it was, still was a bit treacherous. If I had been forced to wear the pointed shoes, I probably would have slipped numerous times.

The village itself was based along one road. Wooden buildings stood on either side of it, most of them looking like houses. The largest one was closest to the school and looked like it could hold a fair amount of people. It was probably a tavern of some sort.

My mother stopped in front of a building about halfway down the street and pulled the door open. She stepped in, and I followed into a front room that had a large table and several sets of shelves as the only furniture. The door closed behind us with the sound of a bell.

I looked at the shelves. They seemed to be full of rolls of linen. They weren't smooth, but had ridges, like there was something inside. The table held about a half dozen of them, some rolled up tightly and others simply folded over haphazardly.

"Ah, Magistra Ravenclaw!" A man emerged from the back of the store, as pale as the piles of linen rolls. He held his arms out to my mother and they embraced. "You're not having any trouble, I presume?"

"Of course not, Octavius," she said, smiling. She drew back. "And you're barely a student. I taught you for a year. You don't need to keep calling me magistra. How is your father?"

"Off gathering wood," Octavius said. He leaned back against the nearest table, folding his arms. "He said he was going to Glastonbury to gather some thorn wood."

"Do you think they'll actually let him?" My mother looked very interested. "I was under the impression that the wizards of the monastery guarded that tree as fiercely as the monks."

"Glastonbury?" I asked. Octavius turned his attention to me now. His eyes were wide and round, like he had a constant look of surprise about him.

"There's a very ancient tree there," my mother said. "It would make very powerful wands." She placed a hand on my shoulder, propelling me forward. "This is my daughter, Helena."

"She looks a bit young to be starting school," Octavius said. "And this late in the year? Or this early."

"She is nIne and needs a wand," my mother said. Her tone brooked no argument. "She can already do some charms on her own. Simple ones. But I would rather that she use a wand rather than rely on instinct. She is only a child, after all."

Octavius looked at me very closely. He crouched down to eye level. "Your first wand, then, Helena."

He turned back to the table and unfurled the nearest roll of linen. It had several pockets sewn into it, each one containing a wand. He spread it out like a tablecloth and eyed the dozen pieces of wood lying there. He mumbled to himself under his breath, taking out one wand and examining it, then replacing it. He did this twice more until he pulled one out and laid it aside. It took him a few minutes, and the unrolling of every batch of linen-wrapped wands on the table, to lay aside a small group of wands. They ranged in length and colour.

He handed me wands one right after the other, waiting for me to get a good wave in between. Some of them did nothing, others set off sparks. One sent a stream of water toward the shelves without provocation, and another lit a small fire.

"I don't think the rowan wood ones like me," I told my mother. Octavius raised an eyebrow, and she translated for me.

"Clearly not," he said. Of the dozen or so wands I had already tried, the four rowan ones had done nothing at all in my hand. "Here," he stuffed another into my hand.

I gave it a flick. It made the tips of my fingers tingle for a moment. Octavius watched the wand closely.

"Almost," he said, "but not quite." He plucked it from my hand and held the wand up. He examined it for a moment and then put it down on the table with the other rejected wands. He reached up and took down a roll from one of the higher shelves and spread it out on the table. "Try this one."

I waved this one, and the tingling feeling in my fingers grew. It was like pins and needles. I shook my hand, and the wand, and the end lit up.

"Excellent," Octavius said, beaming widely. "Alder wood, good for strong and protective magic. A good wood to aid divinatory charms. The core is powdered ashwinder egg. I believe it was Magister Gryffindor who brought me those a couple of years ago, was it not? It would make a find wand for a duelist if she was a son."

"What?" I asked.

"Hush, Helena," my mother said in Bulgarian. I looked at her, and then back at Octavius Ollivander, my eyes narrowing. At nine years old, several things seemed colossally unfair, and I had just added another thing to that list.

"Now, payment."

"Right here," my mother said, and reached into her robes. She pulled out a small package and set it on the table before undoing the leather strap that held it closed. I stepped closer and saw a small, braided loop of silvery hairs. "I found them in the forest one day, soon after Godric had introduced them to his third-years."

"Ah," Octavius said. He didn't touch the hairs, but snapped his fingers. A pair of gloves appeared and he slid them on. He carefully picked up the small braid.

"I take it that will be enough."

"More than enough, Magistra Ravenclaw," Octavius said, but his interest was already gone from us. He was focused on the braid.

"Say thank you, Helena."

"Thank you," I repeated, in English. I carried my wand in my hand out of the shop. It now had tiny puffs of silvery clouds coming out of the end. I barely waited until the door closed before turning to my mother. "What did he mean 'if I was a son'?"

My mother sighed. She did that a lot, I was finding. Especially when she didn't want to answer me straight away.

"Mother?" I pressed.

"Women don't duel, Helena," she said.

"I thought it was taught here, though," I said. I was certain that I had seen older students practicing hexes and spells, throwing them at each other in the courtyard.

"Here, perhaps, but not outside." We reached the edge of town and headed on the road back up to the school.

"Why not?"

"Because there's no need to," my mother said. Her words carried back to me on the wind as I scrambled to keep up. I took extra care with my steps this time. I didn't want to fall and break my wand.

"But how should a witch protect herself?"

"Her husband would protect her."

I frowned. This didn't seem right. It certainly wasn't reconcilable with what I knew. Yes, my foster-parents were married, and yes, Dad looked after Mam, but there wasn't any duelling involved. And Mam was just as handy with magic as he was.

"What if she doesn't have a husband?"

"All witches have husbands," my mother said.

"You don't."

Silence fell between us as we reached the front gate. My mother turned and crouched down to my eye level. "Your father and I." She paused, and sighed again. I waited. "We were a special case."

"You can duel, can't you?"

"Yes," my mother said. A shadow passed over her eyes and she frowned. "I don't like to, though. It's horrible."

"But you know how."

"Yes, I know how, Helena."

"I want to learn how," I said. I didn't just want to, I needed to learn how. I needed to learn how to protect myself from fire, from smoke, from invading armies, from the world.

She must have seen something of that feeling in my face, because my mother swept me into a hug. It didn't last very long, but it was still a hug. She spoke into my hair. "Helena, you won't need to protect yourself as long as you're here. The castle can, and it will. And I can, and I will, all right?"

I nodded, feeling let down. For a moment I thought she had understood what I had meant, that there was no way that I was going to stop. I was going to learn how to duel, how to protect myself. I never wanted to feel the terror and weakness in the fire and the smoke again. I opened my mouth to try and put this feeling into words.

I was cut off by a very loud sound, and then the noise of someone shouting. My mother and I turned as one to look at the school. If we could hear them from down by the gate, then they were shouting very loud.

"Come on, Helena," my mother said. She hurried into the grounds and I followed, practically running to catch up.

We found the disturbance easily. I could identify the two men standing in front of the castle by sight now. The thicker, older one with the reddish gold hair was Godric Gryffindor. He was in an argument with Salazar Slytherin, the man who I had accidentally wandered into during my first exploration of the castle. The initial noise my mother and I had heard must have been the front doors of the castle slamming open.

Helga's pendant continued to translate for me as my mother and I stood. A small group of students was gathering, some from further out in the grounds, and a few that had followed from inside the castle.

Slytherin was the one yelling now: "It's not about their ability, it's about their willingness to learn! You can't take a child and throw it into a world that it's been told is evil all its life and expect it to go on like nothing's happened."

"That's why we're here, Salazar. We help them cope with this." Though neither of them had their wands drawn, there was still a dangerous tension in the air, like they might erupt into a duel at any moment. I clutched my wand tighter, keeping it by my side.

"By the time they're eleven it's too late. They're indoctrinated with Muggle thinking and no amount of time spent with us is going to undo that. We don't even know what they're going to do when they leave here. There's no place for them to go."

"So what do you suggest, stealing them from their cradles like gypsies? Kidnapping them?"

"What I'm saying is that we need to be more selective in our students. It's hard enough to teach young witches and wizards as it is without adding Muggles into the mix."

"You don't even teach the young ones. You stay with your precious chosen few, locked up for hours, away from everyone else."

"That is exactly my point! With our kind, there's already an element of training. We educate our children and they know how to control themselves. When they grow up with Muggles, they just inspire terror. What do you think would happen if a seven-year-old suddenly lit something on fire without it actually burning? Panic, Godric. They panic. Their family panics and when all's said and done, someone ends up dead. There's too much damage done already by the time they come here."

"We are not going to stop admitting students from Muggle families just because it offends your sensibilities, Salazar."

"Offends my sensibilities?" Slytherin's voice dropped low, dangerous. "It's not my sensibilities I'm worried about, it's the safety of this entire school. What happens when some idiot lets it slip to the wrong person? What happens if a king finds out and sends his armies here? What happens if the church gets involved? You know what happened the last time, with Patrick and the Druids!"

Gryffindor sounded tired when he spoke again. "History needn't repeat itself here. We've moved on from that, we've learned."

"Have we really." Slytherin's voice was cold. The way he looked at Gryffindor made me think that he was about to set him on fire or strike him down with just his gaze. "Muggles don't change as quickly as you think, Godric." With that, he turned on his heel and stalked off. The students on the steps parted in his wake and Helga came running out of the castle, moving in the opposite direction. She gave him a quizzical look, but he just shook his head and continued on. She reached mother and I.

"What was it this time?" she asked, sounding a bit out of breath.

Gryffindor rubbed his hand over his face and leaned back against the outside wall of the castle.

"The usual," my mother replied, tight-lipped. She raised her voice. "Don't you all have work you should be doing?"

The students began to disperse. I watched Gryffindor walk past us, heading toward the village, muttering something under his breath. My mother took a step toward him, but he just shook his head. She fell back to stay with Helga and I. She didn't talk very much for the rest of the evening.


End file.
